I've run this through Babelfish Translator and got the following rather surreal text.

If anyone can translate Italian into English, please let me have a better translation.

The magnificent stravaganza of the English group (stampabile Vers.)

You want to make the alchemists musical? Well, cleared the mind from every thought, authority and conditioning and fairies to flow all that that you want in yours sound.

Fairies like the Big Block 454, than without limits shoot to the world their cauldron of styles and kinds: from the Beatles to the King Crimson, from Frank Hoe to the kraut rock passing for the electronics and the fusion. "Their coats flapped like God' s chops" is a disc in which the fragment and the flash spadroneggiano.

This but is not synonymous of incompiutezza, hybrid or disorder: in the disc of band the American all it seems to be to the just, firm place remaining that of experiment and open plan draft, given over therefore to become part whichever cue and intention.

As an example after a incipit of art rock spigoloso and zappiano "The uses of mercy" and "Roses" they are approached more to hurting post rock, surprising for the intensity and the sense of the space. "Pomeranian bullcat" is instead loved pastiche of those a lot from the Danish Robin Taylor.

The first Adrian Belew is made to feel in "Hull is full of gruppy slappers", but in a generalized manner all the 17 brani are fruit of a nonsense bizzarro typically to stars
and strisce, that it sees also in the French Tv and the Bubblemath of the excellent colleagues. Nevertheless the boys are English and in theirs aplomb British, in theirs sorniona and aristocrat elegance they reveal their mind "british", nearly they were sealed with lead to the times of the "Swingin' London" in company of the Bonzo
Dog Band (I pray to listen to "Cheetham hill to Miles Platting" and "My porcine waste of Time").

Strong German ancestries do not lack then, from best the Can to the Faust ("Corporal cloud", "The republic of Rain") passing for Neu! and La Dusseldorf.

Interesting disc, that it spaces in a dense area free form of suggestions, is advised to the listeners more curious and available to the innovationes.

 

I like the translation of Frank Zappa as "Frank Hoe".

I agree that "all the 17 brani are fruit of a nonsense bizzarro typically to stars and strisce", because they are, they really are.

 

This must be Channel 9's cultural editor..
 

BIG BLOCK 454. That's A Nice Hat.
 
Treading very carefully, I placed the cdr into the awaiting tray. I pressed play, and gingerly waited. Words like, hell fire!, and stunning immediately sprang to mind.

Above all, the four tracks on here represent, for me, what being your own boss is about - the freedom to create music that is highly original (and yet acknowledge its roots). There's some brilliant musicians on here, but above all it's mixed with a bit of fun. Y'see, when you get lyrics like 'warm water, cold milk, I name this child Acker Bilk' backed with some inspired music it's a bit like Zappa's occasional classics where there was a big dose of humour, but it was all underpinned with great music.

There's six musos that make up Big Block 454, and when you read their influences (Zappa, Bartok, Captain Beefheart, Faust, Eno, Syd Barrett and the Residents), you have a clearer idea of the quality of the gear on here. At over 20 minutes, the four tracks are as different to each other as though it was a compilation of different bands. The second track reminds you of Eno, with its gentle piano and backdrops of found sounds/sfx.

To me this is what music should be all about, exploring, having a great time, being inventive, and ending up with some awesomely inspired music. Eating Soap Alone, Canned Food In Combat and I Was Just About To Yodel - too good for my limited grasp of the language. It's worth getting your own computer to hear this! I mean these guys can REALLY play their instruments!
    

 

I think they liked it!!!  ..  can I sell it for you as non-compressed full CD quality audio downloads
 

Colin, this is hysterically funny

 

Review by Dermo (from Northside and Silent Partners) on the Manchester is Music website (click on 'Dermo' on the top bar):

Big Block 454

How can you not love a band who have a member whose role is for ‘funny handshakes’ ha ha I love it. Their sound is ‘like waking up in a toy shop and tin soldiers, jack in the box and clowns are all on acid, laughing and coming at you, aaarrrhhhh.’ If I could describe my dreams set to music, then BB 454 are it. Answers Come In Dreams ay ha ha.

They have mad little sayings and genius lyrics that rubber cartoons, robots and bank robbers would be proud of. I hear choirboys and mad monks discussing the grand national while a posh twin signs on ha ha. Defo a case of ‘Sing LSD’ Throw into the mix, Michael Bentine’s Potty Time, Boards Of Canada,Tenacious D, Beck and Zappa. This band rule! Just have a listen to ‘Cheetham Hill To Miles Platting By Hovercraft’ and the fantastic ‘Hull Is Full Of Grubby Slappers’ and dare to keep a straight face.

In their own words they sound like ‘Wonky Bingo’

Downloads, pics, videos,reviews, and all sorts of mentalness at Big Block 454.

Even in the eye of the storm they’ve still got a professionalism that I admire, at the mo the band (or the 3 wise men as I like to call em) are creating a new LP with the working title of ‘They Broke My Magic Stick’ it just gets better ha ha. They’re considering some live dates soon and I really hope they do cos I’d be at the front with a walnut whip down my star trek ha ha.

‘Their Coats Flapped Like Gods Chops’ or ‘An Evening At Blank Franks Bun Factory’

Both!

 

Any news on live dates?

Why not organise a free festival of Northern irrelevance, mung function will play for sure..

 

Review of "That's a Nice Hat" by James Mann on Ink.19 website, August 2002.

Arghh! What the hell is this? This doesn't sound like Blink-182! What sort of song title is "I Name This Child Acker Bilk"? All four songs sound different. The guitar is too loud; the vocals remind me of that crap called The Residents. "I Was Just About to Yodel" -- what is that all about? Why would anyone who seemingly grew up listening to krautrock, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and punk rock try and make a record? This stuff is too challenging. The drumming is tribal, the songs shift and shimmer like those wavy lines you get in your peripheral vision when you eat the wrong sort of mushrooms. No wonder this stuff is hard to find -- no major label is gonna put this stuff out. Hell, you almost have to have read a book to like it. Doomed to commercial failure, these four tracks of joyful self-expression are. Go back to making lace dollies out of double helix strands, why don't ya?

Note to those readers who traded in their sense of satire for an SUV: Big Block 454 is the perfect future of music for those of us who keep the hi-fi down the hall in the room called "Planet X." This music leaves holes in your head nothing else can fill.
 

Great review in the latest  Incendiary Magazine -  look under Reviews / Albums.

Also, have a look at Incendiary's My Space page.

Big Block 454  Their Coats Flapped like Gods Chops.

Before hearing this CD I spent a whole day just reading the song titles. I just couldnt get past them, they were that legendary. I might even nick some for use in my artwork. Get these kids

William Henry Perkin accidentally invents mauve
Hull is full of grubby slappers
Cheetham Hill to Miles Platting (by Hovercraft)
Horse Stare
Vanilla Overcoat

As you might inspect after that brief perusal, the music encased within is somewhat eclectic. However it possesses a lyrical, reflective heart that is allowed to blossom in a rather melancholy way. If I was to play the reference game, it would be churlish of me not to mention Brian Enos mid seventies releases, especially Before and After Science and Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. The track My Porcine Waste of Time also recalls fellow North West eccentrics Ceramic Hobs.

Still, theres a lot more here than mere nostalgia for a musical genre. It is extremely experimental music in that it makes considerable efforts to maintain the sharpness in its gestures and dynamics. The band never knowingly allow or omit anything that would prevent the music retaining its edge. Drastic, dramatic changes in direction and mood are commonplace.

One of the standout tracks for me is the mad stomp of Pomeranian Bullcat; which is all over the place, revelling in its own inability to tell a straight musical story. At one sublime moment the music sounds as if Fela Kuti has been taken hostage by a convention of table tennis enthusiasts, only to find a soul-mate in the guitarist from The Electric Prunes, a fellow hostage. At other times it sounds like (and I really cant do better than to lift this cod-music criticism quote from Anthony Powells Dance to the Music of Time series) a lot of owls quarrelling in a bicycle factory.

There are moments of sublime trippy ambient loveliness too; The Golden Age of Braking Systems on the Maryport & Carlisle Railway is just such a moment, a beautiful piano coda just about holding this fragile piece together. The trio of tracks with the title Three Alternatives also radiate an ethereal, stripped down beauty.

So, what to make of it? Youve read the song titles, youve read my fumbling attempts to codify the music on this release into something you might identify with but really, you just have to listen. A great release and one you should hunt down without delay.

 
Words: Richard Foster.

You can buy the album online at the Big Block 454 eBay shop.

 

 

Review of Big Block 454's "Their coats flapped like God's chops" by Cath Aubergine in Manchester Music.

Not so much an album as a sonic collage, whereby the combined works of Faust, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the experimental end of Swell Maps and Vivian Stanshall are blended into a new and interesting shape, fed to Brian Eno and distilled into odd little one, two and three minute screenshots of Big Block 454s fascinating and sometimes scary world. The result is not unlike an aural anthology of short stories, soundtracks to films which may or may not have been made.

Sometimes the titles provide clues in The Uses Of Literacy a sombre voice tells of a sign, warning of machines on the bottom of the reservoir on a hot day as the music chills and creeps around splashing water. Elsewhere they seem deliberately obtuse William Henry Perkin Accidentally Invents Mauve is closer to an actual tune but with vocals which are not so much singing as mildly disturbing intonations. The title in this case is actually true; said renowned chemist having isolated the first synthetic dye from coal tar in 1856, fact fans only three tracks in an my minds expanding in all manner of directions. Whether the next tracks title (Hull Is Full Of Grubby Slappers) is true or not is something Ill leave to those with more knowledge of the place than me. Further in, the snapshots include odd stitched-together snippets of speech and clanking noises (The Golden Age Of Braking Systems On The Maryport & Carlisle Railway/John Coltrane Wouldnt Have Called It Ping-Pong), dour gothesque theatrics interspersed with unsettling clicks and sctratches (the relatively sensibly-named Roses) and some more conventional electropop admittedly with the vocals still set to wayward (The Republic Of Rain)

Taken in one sitting this is a wander through someone elses dreams and nightmares, funny and frightening and just plain incomprehensible in different places (and on Cheetham Hill To Miles Platting By Hovercraft all three), and then it all ends in the loveliness of a conventional (if woozy) song (Vanilla Overcoat) about putting the past into boxes maybe the key to the whole puzzle, or I might be reading too much into it. Given the unpredictable nature of the previous sixteen tracks it wouldnt be too surprising if it ended in a frenzy of wrenched metal or elephants howling, but it doesnt, and is all the better for it. File under uneasy listening, sub-genre fractured genius.

 

Review of "Their coats flapped like God's chops" in Wonderful Wooden Reason Issue 7.

Long time Manchester experi-mentalists Big Block 454 travel the gamut of outsider-music traditions over the course of this 17 track album. Their cited influences of Krautrock, The Residents and the Bonzo Dog Band are always apparent but never all-consuming allowing BB454 the freedom to pursue their own identity. The funkier side of Can is, to the these ears at least, the most obvious of those influences as BB454 delve into a much unexplored area of experimental music - that which you could conceivably hit the dance floor and bop along to. Music for the head and the feet. It has to be said that there are a couple of moments on this cd about which I have nothing nice to say, these being mostly decents into whimsy and zany. Fortunately, these are few and the rest veers between the sublime and the magnificent.

 

 

Review of "Their coats flapped like God's chops" by Al Baker on www.transfire.org.uk

How would God’s chops flap I hear you ask?  Well I’ll tell you, they flap like nothing I’ve ever heard before.  Avant-garde is one thing, but this is ridiculous.  Granted, I should perhaps have been warned what I was in for by the track names on the case (the real gems include William Henry Perkin accidentally invents mauve, Hull is full of grubby slappers and John Coltrane wouldn’t have called it ping-pong) but listening to this album is not so much a leisure activity as an intensive experience.
There simply aren’t the words to describe this album to you here.  Big Block 454 have come up with something truly original.  They mix electronics, sound FX and synthesisers with very catchy guitar riffs, the sort of drum rhythms only Tom Waits could dream of trying and the result is so far left-field it’s in the stands selling hot dogs.  The lyrics are inspired and I could spend a fortnight deciphering them (For example “Burning my pyjamas with a kerosene lamp/I saw an angel/Forty grubby slappers with a belly full of fun” – taken from Hull is full of grubby slappers).
The musicianship appears to be very competent, though the style being what it is makes it hard to judge.  Their creativity shines through and Big Block 454 succeed in challenging their audience with a blinding mix of dry wit, intelligence and artistry which far exceeded any expectation I may have had.
The album runs to 17 tracks.  Every one of them is astoundingly creative and perfectly unique.  I recommend this as a must to anyone with a taste for the unabashedly bizarre. 

For fans of:
Tom Waits (later stuff)
Pink Floyd (when it all got a bit too silly)
Extreme avant-rock
 

Review of "Bratislava" by Big Block 454 on the Manchester Music website, 31/07/08

When the MM website first started up at the end of the 90’s, a bizarre collective based in Prestwich offered an album of their wild and frankly disturbing leftfield, progressive pop. I seem to remember there being a track about sausages – or something similar... Fast forward to now and this latest long player from Big Block 454 maintains this skewered intelligence and allows the low slung new wave strangeness to shine through on “Motorcycle Au Pair Boy” – can you get the flavour now ?

I for one think that the world has only just caught up and as BB454 also now take a more accessible route, this album is immensely relevant and ground breaking, given that many other (obscure and often American) bands have begun to explore similar territories. Whilst made and forged in northern England, this genre twisting affair combines the outlandish ideas of bands like The Cardiacs whilst sounding occasionally rustic, or twangy, or brittle. The superbly titled “I Was Arthur Brown’s Safety Advisor” - a fact that who knows, may well be true - provides unlikely connections between Beck and Joy Division, whilst “Lush Ulan Bator” is somewhere between Chas 'n Dave, Stereolab and Blur.

“Three Sevens Clash” is the kind of stuff John Peel would have loved – tumbling drums and sound structures that celebrate the Fall. A late 70’s splash of offset, sharp guitars create a kind of vomitting funk that allows the vocals to creep through on static breaching radio frequencies. “Upside-Down & Dirty” is the essence of Death In Vegas and the early Mute / Factory catalogue. Loads of reference points therefore, but really these are only necessary to (i) explain the competence and quality and (ii) provide the easiest way to describe the sheer diversity of this compelling group. There’s no reason why this band shouldn’t be more widely feted.


MMMM ½

by JA
 

Review of "Bratislava" by Big Block 454 on the Progressive Ears website

Big Block 454; taking their name from a particular type of engines used in cars manufactured in the US in the past, is a UK band who's been at it for some time. According to their MySpace page they have 7 more releases under their belt - but with the tongue-in-cheek manner they present themselves, I can't vouch for the truthfulness of that fact though. Bratislava is their latest album, released in 2008.

And the dozen compositions on this CD are something special, that's for sure. Rather unique in approach, these songs are a mix of influences from all manners of music; at the least experimental they sound like a mix of Beatles, Madness and The Cramps; at their most experimental words like krautrock and avant-garde comes easily to mind.

These guys play around with sound, song structure and preconceived notions on what music should sound like. There's not much dissonance or disharmony here though, there's a focus on delivering melodies. It's all done in a very whimsical manner though; talking in the back of the song instead of regular vocals, male background choir underscoring said talking. Some regular vocals in songs that perhaps would have been best suited for talking voices, irregular song structures performed as normal tunes and vice versa.

Few facets of this release are as expected, and often they're very far from being so. This corny mix of beat, ska and kraut with punk attitudes randomly spiced with psychedelic and spacy effects in a low-fi sounding mix have two dimensions to it that really saves it from being an incomprehensible egoistical highbrow art release though, in case anyone should get this notion. Firstly these tunes are whimsical; these guys don't take themselves too seriously and whatever experiment they venture forth to perform is done with a highly tongue-in-cheek approach. They're having a lark, and want their listeners to do the same. Secondly, the overall sound here is very English. There's something extremely Wodehousean to the moods and atmospheres here without me managing to pinpointing exactly which elements responsible for this.

And frankly, I don't think this band wants their music to be analyzed too much either. This is whacky, whimsical and weird shit - but an entertaining one at that, with catchy melodies and more or less subtle details that will bring a smile to your face after a bad day at work or just a rough day in general.

If you enjoy experimental progressive rock, and appreciate a band that isn’t highbrow and deadly serious while playing it, this one should be give a shot.

My rating: 83/100

Reviewed by Windhawk
 

Review of "Bratislava" on the Wonderful Wooden Reasons website.

I liked the last BB454 album i heard but the daftness got on my nerves more than a little and spoilt the album for me. This time out however the daftness is fully integrated into the album. it's woven throughout in both the music and the lyrics and boy does it work. Sure there are moments throughout that I'm not connecting with (Melamine for instance) but on the whole, and it's the whole that counts, this is corking stuff that takes elements of Devo, The Residents and a whole host of other outsider pranksters and adds a healthy dose of English eccentricity to create something new and wonderful. This isn't going to be for everyone but it's definitely for me.

http://wonderfulwoodenreasons.homestead.com/reviewsAtoC.html
 

Review of "Bratislava" in Progression Magazine Issue 55

Track 5 is entitled "I was Arthur Browns Health & Safety Advisor" The Cardiacs along with Frank Zappa, Gong, and the Residents are listed as influences. The warnings were there: Strap yourself in before playing.


Bratislava is one wild ride. Compositions are all over the place. To say the instrumentation is unorthodox would be a gross understatement. If you don't like a passage, wait a few seconds.


Dont be fooled by the opening numbers relatively straight yet humorous rock maneuvering... that just lures you in. The next tune sounds like a crossbred Sun city girls/Coyote Poets of the Universe. An Arabian acid trip would best describe track three. This is followed by an indescribable dub influenced piece with accordian and crazy mumbling.


The aforementioned "Arthur Brown" is strangely beautiful with acoustic guitar, electronics, and clattering percussion.
The next cut sounds like it's lifted from one of Eno's early vocal albums! And thats just the halfway mark!

Each successive play reveals clever instrumentation and subtle background vocals.
An original and enjoyable release, Bratislava is a gift that keeps on giving-- Warren Barker