Back to the Brut

Dearest Internet

I am aware that you leak like a bastard titanic so here is what others may have missed...

Art Brut vs. Satan will be descending on your shelves at exactly April 20th. Here's what our brother in arms apparent, Eddie Argos, had to say -

“I don't always enjoy the recording process - all that fiddling with guitars and drum sounds waiting for my turn to ‘sing’. This time though, we did it just right. We spent a day getting the sound of the instruments perfect, then with all of us in the same room at the same time, with the amazing Black Francis conducting us, we pressed record, jumped around and played our songs. This is how I always thought albums were made and it’s definitely how we're doing it from now on!”. Having heard the completed work, unlike yourself, I can assure that this is no mean feat.


This will be proceeded by the single Alcoholics Unanimous on April 6th. Clue is in the name. I have it on good authority that a visual accompaniment will also be delivered.

Plus, a shockyoumentally concerning the whole Salem affair is also in the works, blocking the musical pipes.

Oh, and here are some tour dates.

In other new, Barnaby was present at the Radio 2 Folk Awards this Monday last. In fact, I can confirm he accidentally stumbled onto the stage during a performance by the indomitable Jim Moray. Ten points for the first spot.

yours folkily

Barnaby Fudge

An Introduction

Dearest Internet

On account of the thousands of hastily assembled dolls, sketches and blurred Polaroid photographs that I have crammed into every nook, cranny and bare, slimy, granite surface this cramped cell has to offer, I am never far from you. Your likeness is never more than six inches from my fleshy corpus. Some have labelled me a hermit, a pervert; living as I do, so far beneath the surface, chewing on rat bones and discarded kitchen scourers, but I always have you. You have been the only company this putrid old bone bag could need. You are the reason I persist with this facade of employment. This mirage of reciprocated service. Let's call an egg an egg and call it what it really is, voluntary slavery. Although Art Brut have made it clear on numerous occasions my services are no longer required, they are mistaken. These 'chaotic ramblings' are propelling them forward in ways they cannot fathom. They stumble around in their arrogant smog not giving a hoot for the common, educated man. Not caring for Barnaby's needs. They will learn. Their boat will soon sail. They've got something coming, right in gene pool...

However this stone box in which I sleep, eat, write and defecate has begun to suffocate. I find myself waking in what I presume to be the dead of night, my mouth filled with sweat, my steel bed rancid with drool, my thoughts stuffed with images of youth. For I too recall my days on the surface. A happier time for myself and occasionally others. Lavish parties, exotic harems, days missing in the back alleys of Khartoum. You see, I spent many joyous years touring the ports of the world in the service of Her Majesty's merchant navy. A magical mystery journey. I have seen things that would cause you to vomit and climax in equal and sometimes simultaneous measure. I joined at the tender age of sixteen, having been discarded on the streets of Wigan by a tyrannical patriarch at six. I had already learned a great many things. An old Jewish fellow had taken an interest in me and along with a rag tag group of other boys we roamed the back allies and piazzas bringing petty crime to Wigan's uncaring upper classes. After a number of months I grew to become the old man's favourite and soon I took up residence in his quarters so he could tutor me to greater effect. It was here I received my education, within those three cardboard walls, for you see Dale was a man of great learning. As if gifted with some precognitive ability he claimed the last whispered words that trickled into my grubby sound pipes, on what I later learned was my sixteenth birthday, contained his last dribble of knowledge. I had sucked him dry.

Thus, there under a small pile of rags, I left Dale's freezing corpse and began the long journey to the sea, thinking that there I would find a new benefactor to feed, clothe and train me. After several months of ambling the highways and byways (I was seemingly misdirected by a travelling tinker), I reached what appeared to be a port. Unsure of nautical procedure or custom, I jumped the first ship that caught my eye and concealed myself below deck in a barrel of, what would soon become rancid, dates. I did not consider it at the time but this would be my home for next three to four years. I existed only in the bowels of the ship, to what must have been the full knowledge of the sailors on board. They, however, chose ignore me or at least pretend they could not see my spindly, bearded form snatching crusts from the jaws of stinking bilge rats.

It was here I met the gentleman I wish to introduce to you, my beautiful network of networks. For I was not the only man to have stowed away on this floating scurvy tin. You see, one day, as I was attempting to source nourishment to hinder the on set of a particularly troublesome bout of rickets, I wrenched the top from a large box of dried mackerel only to discover the gasping, naked form of a man. After several hours dowsing him with buckets of salt water in a desperate attempt to draw him out of shock, he calmed down enough to stutter his name, Mr. Gaylord St. James. He explained he was an actor, from Hollywood no less, and had accidentally become embroiled with a gang of Thai jungle pirates. Having incurred a heavy debt through several weeklong bouts of Hung Pan he had escaped what appeared to be a certain and painful death by flinging himself into the closest and fastest river. As the pirates shook their fists and fired their rusty pistols, the desperate starlet clung to a floating palm letting the river deliver him to the Fates' behest. He was spat, water logged and starving into the ocean, thinking that death here would be a welcome release from the weeks of severe sun stroke and plagues of river parasites. However, as he slowly lost consciousness and slipped silently into the depths he became tangled in the nets of a Dutch fishing trawler. He was yanked aboard but on account of the huge volume of sea life bought up by these Nemoic vessels his eviscerated form was barely noticed and he was processed and cleaned like any other salty kipper. Miraculously he survived and living off a diet of raw fish and rain water he was eventually salted, boxed up and loaded onto my homestead in the port of Kantang only to be released, in the nick of time, by your humble narrator.

So, after days nourishing him to the best of my ability, Mr. St. James regained some semblance of rational thought and slowly a bond began to grow between us. We were both young men at the time and had been craving any meaningful human contact for many months. We sat there in the dark regaling each other with tales of hardship and deviance that some day I may relate to you, beloved Internet, but they are not for these pages. We became close friends. We slept, ate, drank and dreamt together. Then, one day, he was gone. I awoke from another sweaty night terror to find his sack empty, filled with nothing but dried skin and spittle, a final reminder of his generous spirit. I thought him drowned, imprisoned or eaten. Like Dale, another loved one snatched from Barnaby by the seemingly forever-spiteful gods. That is until approximately three weeks ago when, trawling through your lengthy client roster, I came across a passage that could of only been written by one man. A short but concise piece of prose of such wit and insight I half expected it to be a forgotten missive from myself. Gaylord St. James has strolled back into my life. My one, true friend has returned. I have provided a conduit below through which you may reach him. I implore you, sweet Internet, to provide him with as much joy and nourishment as you have given me. Welcome, Gaylord, welcome!

yours with a joyous heart

Barnaby Fudge

P.S. I am aware that this not on quite the same tack, but it has come to my attention you have been providing certain entertainment protagonists with the same face. Please see below.




Portugese captain and professional look-a-like, Nuno Gomes




Stopped bothering, reggae loving, musician type, Julian 'gravitas' Casablancas

AND




00's likeable best friend, Jason Segel





80's likable best friend, Judge Reinhold

I look forward to a written apology.

Look Back in Anger

Dearest Internet

As an elderly gent, I find my C15 Cameo Mono Electric Riser to be the perfect little chair on which to muse on the complex machinations of the modern world. The crumbling miasma of cultural identity seems to sit more comfortably in the mind the more comfortably my papery flesh balloon is cradled in the fibre back cushion, button back design. The quiet and smooth, three position lift system centres the mind’s eye, the vapours of age swallowed by the New Levante Burgandy (Vinyl) skin. Ticket checked, discount counted, first class on the relax your ass train to Going to be Here an Awfully Long Time…

I would have expected this stylish design to bring a certain calm to my withered, little thought sack; a new found clarity would bind to my wealth of experience. From this I could birth a new, younger philosophy. A philosophy on which I could construct the brief, Floridian condo of years I have spent half of my half cocked life looking forward to. However, to my surprise, all that elderly comfort reluctantly gives is the desire for more of the same: more comfort, but now the once passive little jaunt on the Comfort Liner has gone active; it now masquerades as its ugly cousin, nostalgia. The flabby torso of the mediocre struggles its varicose pins into the snug leggings of the familiar. Suddenly, every past, regrettable act can dull the spiny spectre of the present. All I now want is to suffocate myself with every past object, emotion, sound, every slightest déjà vu I can forcibly rip from the walls, furniture and faces that insist on stumbling into my plod along life. I have become the lord of nostalgia, the king of retrospect, the regent of the rose tint. So, I like to talk about smells that remind me of some time, songs that bring to mind so and so, feelings that rediscover inappropriate anecdotes. I whittle my day around boring Tom, Dick and, indeed, Harry. Because I’m old. The more years you notch up the higher the general public’s tolerance for self-indulgent whimsy. I’m old. Old, old, old. Old. You, however, are not. You are young. You are an idiot.

That’s right. You have no business pissing about with nostalgia. It is not acceptable. Get out of my toy box. I’m taking to Flog It! on Wednesday and I don’t want you sabotaging my one and only shot with Paul Martin. He’s too comfy, an over familiar family friend in a slow moving scarf storm. He’s mine and I don’t want you stinky students getting your sweaty glo sticks anywhere near him. Why does the youth feel this need to remember? What use is it to them? How is wrapping yourself up in a Knight Rider duvet and watching Labyrinth fifteen times conducive to a balanced, future of mankind-y type personality? This is not irony, this is retreat.

This particular brand of youth nostalgia seems to have leaked into all sorts of things. Every little unwashed crevice of the 18 – 30 is now drenched in ironic past stumbling. Groping around in an audio-visual charity shop, at night, in sunglasses, without any eyes. Take London’s clown fest of an East End, or indeed anywhere within puking distance of an art school. The shop windows are wormholes, rectangular, day glo portals sucking time and rational thought back into the late 80s – early 90s. Seemingly, juxtaposing a He Man figure and a shoe is the perfect way to extract £80 from any unsuspecting twenty something. These shops are bizarre, creepy places. I understand vintage fashion, looking back and picking the best bits seems to make some old fashioned kind of sense. However, we now see the pillaging of the past for pillaging’s sake. Not because the clothes make you look better but because they are patronisingly funny. This is not fashion, this is coating yourself in layers of childhood. You may as well travel back in time, rip off your own seven year old arms and sport them as leg warmers.

The essence of vintage, discontinued lines, and backwards looking past times are changing a context. Standing in a bus stop dressed as Anthony Eden’s sharper looking cousin means a whole lot more now than it did then. Not because it makes me all gooey inside, I wasn’t anywhere near the stop in question, it’s just an original alternative to buying your suits in Moss Bros. Whereas, throwing on a purple shell suit and a Global Hypercolor tshirt and playing an Atari ST until your eyes bleed is culture for irony’s sake or, as I would suggest, for familiarity’s sake. You can bellow all you want about postmodernism and rediscovering pilled up box dancing as a misunderstood art form but in reality you are just clinging to a more comfortable time. A time when you didn’t have to worry about art exams, how to pay the rent in your warehouse / wank space or how to get on the guest list for that club… you know… the one shaped like a shoe (Old Mother Hubbard’s, 101 Old Street). It’s the cultural equivalent of clamping your chops firmly around your mother’s breast and not letting go until it all looks safe outside i.e. your late thirties.

But is it merely the recycling time lag catching up with itself? Clothes wise, this could arguably be the case. The indie scene in recent years has prided itself on introducing forgotten looks back into the Zeitgeist. There were the flares, Fred Perry and zip up tracksuit tops of the 90s and the tight jeans, new wave hair and possibly new rave twats in the 00s; the reference point slowly catching up with the present. Possibly. But I don’t remember listening to Television when I was seven or rocking out to Talking Heads in line for Laser Quest. But, you do remember listening to 2Unlimited on Now 20. You do remember playing Chucky Egg, fighting with Scorponoc and wearing a bum bag. You can’t seem separate the reference point from the memory.

So, I should sit here in my reclinable sitting machine and despair? How did it ever get to this? There is no hope! Pull the plug, cave my sallow skull in with a calculator watch. But, no. Like any self respecting dead man walking, I have a Bono full of patronising advice. Leave well alone, youth rebellion. Nostalgia is not meant for you. You have no place hiding under the duvet with the lights out, there’s no room in here. In twenty years the vintage shops will be empty. The East End a ghost town. There will be nothing left. The whole process will have collapsed in on itself unless you can figure something out for yourselves. Childhood was shit. Forget it. Move on. Get down to your practice rooms and throw out your sirens, dummys and glow sticks. Give us something else to be pissed off with that we don’t remember from last time.

yours with genuine concern

Barnaby Fudge

Give thanks for the Future

Dearest Internet

I apologise for interrupting your festive period with further correspondence. Many promises and half truths were cast around during the lengthy legal process your seemed so keen on embarking on but you can rest assured it will take more than a few rulings from pile of wrinkled skin in a wig to deter Barnaby Fudge's intentions. So it is with a heavy heart that I tell you another rumour has made its wicked way into my waxy noise vents along the canals of your watery loins.

As you are no doubt aware, your courting of other gentlemen has been widely reported in the gutter press and lengthily addressed in my previous letters. Too many hastily drilled glory holes have born witness to a lady of grace slowly transforming into a soiled, digital pin cushion. I have made my position clear on the subject. Many times. Still you persist with your filth. It would appear nothing can satisfy your gargantuan libido. How much junk can you cram into your tiny frame? So now I come to understand one of your more eager suitors has begun casting dispersions concerning the New Year; the celebrated drain day where one annum reluctantly passes its mucus coated baton to the sweaty hand of the next. Apparently every time he leaves the house he expects some kind of fun. Every day is a potential party. What surprises will await him on the other side of his, no doubt, hefty front door? Thus, New Year being no exception, get ready for some serious fun ladies and gents. People who dislike the event should be ashamed of themselves. We should all stop complaining and get on with it.

Well, Mr. Argos, I beg to differ. Having followed his naive and hasty advice over the past few days I have been only met with disgust and shame. I descended on New Year and the days which followed with a demonic fervor. A whirlwind of urine, alcohol and spittle tearing through the alleys and shopping centres of this quiet back water. Groping every behind that presented itself, inserting myself into every available crevice. Housewives covered their infant's eyes and ears, shielding their fragile skin from the maelstrom of bodily fluids and fortified wine struggling to free itself from the back garden washing line, their grandmother's underwear discarded amongst the rhododendrons. The result was a wake of police complaints and unreported assaults not seen since the Lesley glory days. I continued in this manner until the evening just past when both my funds and body collapsed under the intense stress invoked by this booze ridden, sexual haze only to be severely beaten by the mob which had by now collected on my vomit soaked doorstep.

New Year cynicism is there for an essential reason, to deter enjoyment, to discourage the most debauched among us from attending events where children and alcohol are freely available. Give the moderates a chance to shine. They know their limits and the public are only too happy to forgive and forget a few misguided advances and ill advised remarks to the office superior. We, on the other hand, cannot be permitted to behave unchecked, our desires and true natures must not be shown even a glimmer of light. Who knows how far we would go if every day was met with a justifiable appetite for drug fueled predation. Keep the cynicism alive! New Year is not for us. Unbridled enthusiasm is something that must be buried at all costs.

yours with a suspended sentence

Barnaby Fudge

Art Brut vs. Salem

Dearest Internet

Well, they're back. Safe and relatively sound; each one back in their reasonably priced room, nursing frost bitten wounds and brooding over ill gotten memories. The past two weeks have seen the Brut in a whirlwind of snow, bar violence and ill advised facial hair whisking them from second album stalwarts to third album wannabes. The tracks are done, mixed and ready for inspection. Barnaby has a copy. The omens are good. With tracks such as Twist and Shout, Alcoholics Unanimous, Positively 5th Street, plus a song about how rubbish U2 sound, who could you go wrong? I can also assure, that seven and a half minutes of Mysterious Bruises is a musical odyssey to be chewed over like the sweetest of soot covered flesh twigs.

Their return was, however, a close run thing. It would appear the taxi services of Salem, OR. love their town in such a way, the thought of a single, unfortunate soul venturing outside the city limits during the winter is almost too much for them to bear. When the Brut awoke to a light covering of snow on the morning of Friday last they were surprised to learn, from the kind lady at Salem's limo service, that there was, in fact, no point in attempting the run to Portland's international airport as the flight would be canceled anyway. Thanks lady. I was not aware that your cab office was in fact a conduit through which all weather related travel information must travel. However, it was not a point she would willingly argue and no taxis of any kind were forthcoming. Thus, our gentlemen and ladies were kindly shuttled to the plane depot by intrepid engineer to the stars, Jason Carter. Surprisingly, instead of the arctic disaster zone described by Michelle Von No Taxi not one hour previously, our heroes were greeted by a highly functioning, cosmopolitan jet shack. It only goes to show, never underestimate the local half wit's fear of the snow and / or planes.

Here are some photos of Art Brut getting stuck in with Jesus' better looking cousin. Enjoy.

yours ravishingly

Barnaby fudge



Eddie 'post-infernal' Argos.


Ian 'taking one for the team' Catskilkin.


Mikey 'you should of seen the other guy' Breyer.

The Iceman Cometh

Dearest Internet

Over recent days I have heard some troubling mutterings. Through this vast network of tunnels and caves, the familiar odour of distopia has wormed its merry way up Barnaby's botanical stink vents. It would appear the natural order of things has been disturbed. The delicate balance you landys happily defecate upon has been upset and a chain reaction begun. The start of this cataclysmic domino run? Our very own Salem, OR. As previously reported the Brut, somewhat foolishly in retrospect, decided to undertake a musical soiree in Salem's The Space the Saturday last. Much fun was had by all and by accounts our jaunty ensemble went down like a juicy meat treat. However, such was the power of this melodic maelstrom, that it was heard by unintended ears. You see, my interlove, deep below the hustle and bustle of Salem's downtown district something slumbers other than sausage gravy and Eddie Argos' cold hard regret. For thousands of years, a frozen hulk has slept soundly under America's Pacific Northwest. Last seen approximately 130000 years ago, this icy behemoth was sealed under Marion County, OR by unknown powers in order to thaw the perpetual permafrost that was strangling the planet. Now, he's back. See below for a rendering of Frostius, god of ice.



Bow before Frostius!!!!


A direct result of Art Brut meddling in affairs of which they have no understanding. Nature can be a fickle mistress...

Scourge of Carpathia

Dearest Internet

Sadly, on occasions, when I am elbow deep in my own cyber juice, I find myself lucklessly directed to various word holes scattered around your generous loins. These are, of course, alternative to the one you are now so ambitiously perusing. The bitter resignation that floods the soul whilst sucking in these lexiconical cess pools is enough to drive a gentlemen to the streets of Ipswich. As you are no doubt aware, I am crippled with despair.

Mr. Argos is, no doubt, a captivating and engaging individual and I am sure you all revel in his unhinged, unwieldy food related narratives. However, between repeated attempts to gouge out my own eyes, I chanced upon his parabolic tale of baths brimming with a newly acquired sausage gravy addiction. Well, gentleman Argos, as much as it pains me to do so, I have a slice of information that you may wish to cram into you proverbial couplet cave. As a subterranean citizen myself, I am privy to a plentiful selection of facts pertaining to under foot undertakings, and Salem, OR., strangely, is lounging astride of a doozy. You see, long before the European penetration of Salem's ample rump, the land was roamed by the people of the Kalapuya tribe. From grandad Kalapuyan to grandson Kalapuyan, a strange smelling legend was ahanded down. A legend now lost to the Zeitgeist. A legend, although cleansed from human memory, has left an echo in the mantle rocks, an echo only Barnaby's little ears can swallow. A legend of a river. A river that flows beneath the plains. A Brobdingnagian, globulous mass slowly weaving its sticky way under the Kalapuyan's millennia aged hunting grounds. It was said, this lumpy liquid pit was fueled by the bucket loads of hate and discourtesy that, over the centuries, had plagued Kalapuyan society; a porridgey, contempt filled cable. But it seems that this is legend no more. Judging by Argos's ravings, it would appear the river has once again been tapped. A stinky geyser has erupted beneath the very bed box in which the Brut lay their melody riven brain bags. You see, my cyber sweetie, the very 'sausage gravy' with which Mr. Argos has filled his hotel room bath is none other than the concentrated liquid hate the Kalapuyans chronicled those many centuries ago. Each morning, whilst settling down to gobble his"morning hit" he is unknowingly filling his guts with fifteen centuries worth of ill feeling. Sausage gravy is, in fact, part of a huge psychomagnotheric slime flow that's been collecting under the city of Salem.

Don't get me started about the painting in the lobby.

yours with all new cheap moves

Barnaby Fudge