Muddy Suzuki is the soubriquet of one Damo Waters, a sometimes member of more bands than you can shake a stick at, over thirty at the last count. Indeed, sticks are his primary tool for in essence the man is a drummer. However his incarnation as Suzuki is a format that allows him full reign of his creative expression through a panoply of instruments. His music is the fetching madcap output of a head that must be fashioned like the Tardis – bigger than it looks on the outside to accommodate his profuse and diverse ingenuity inside.
His new album is called Nudibranch, which is a kind of mollusc often referred to as a sea-slug, but actually very attractive. It’s an odd contradiction and a bit out of left field. Well there you go, what better way to describe the man himself? He is clearly on the brink but who knows if it’s the edge of genius or insanity, and does it matter anyway? This is pop music as only we British can do. Muddy has taken up the torch carried by many before him – the lunatic fringe without whom we would be so much poorer. The country has always fostered eccentrics and how we all love them for very good reason. Look at Kevin Ayers, or Roy Wood, or Vivian Stanshall. Sometimes their true worth is slightly obscured by two things – outlandishness sometimes overshadows brilliance, and also people are often too blinkered to see what’s before them.
Muddy Suzuki makes very fine music that is a hotch-potch of everything. He doesn’t use a recipe but hoofs it all into the pot like a Michelin chef and out comes musical meringues and sonorous soufflés that rise well above the mediocrity of most others. His brain is an apparatus for invention. Wit and humour are stamped upon his material like a watermark but it would be foolish to allow his blithe spirit to obscure his unalloyed talent. This latest collection has numerous representations. The album makes a grand entrance with the waggishly titled ‘Zebra Croissant’. ‘Non-event horizon’ is a nightmarish soundtrack to a trip that slithers and slides around a landscape of discordant sounds moving in and out of focus, and the lengthy ‘Dodecahedron’, offers a gymnastic display of musical agility and a verbal hop, skip and jump.
So trying to encapsulate this album in words is a bit like trying to describe a fine wine, somewhat pointless and time wasted when you could be drinking it. There are flavours of psychedelia in some of the production, the character of Edward Lear in the words, an aftertaste of Salvador Dali in the flamboyancy, and a bouquet redolent of Syd Barrett. Muddy Suzuki is nothing short of a stylistic kleptomaniac who likes to display his collection in his work. He’s an individual who has a hyperactive flair and suffers from musical ADHD, a veritable Harry Potter beating a rhythm with his wand.
There is certainly some cracking stuff amongst his sorcery. ‘Reincarnation blues’ evolves into a jazzy melange and demonstrates the subtle complexities of his writing which make for beguiling listening while not appearing self-conscious. ‘Kronos’ is a handsome instrumental which is both delicate and slightly manic at the same time, and ‘Scuttling, never knowing’ sounds like a funfair with ECT electrodes attached to it.
The famous line from Forest Gump comes to mind - Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get. That quotation never made sense. You always know exactly what’s in a box of chocolates – the orange sensation and coffee crème that no-one likes etc. Nudibranch is a rare confection and in this case you really don’t know what to expect, apart from the unexpected.
Review by Peter Heydon
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