walrus Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Peter Jackson – 1989 – New Zealand – Cert. 18 – 97m

Offbeat special effects puppet movie proves a let-down despite inventive filmmaking – review originally published in What’s On in London, March 1992.

Walrus producer Bletch (voice: Peter Vere Jones) wants to take his crummy stage show Meet the Feebles onto syndicated television. Unfortunately, he’s switched amorous attentions from leading lady Heidi the Hippo (Danny Mulheron; voice: Mark Hadlow) to Samantha the Siamese Cat (voice: Donna Akersten) – only Heidi hasn’t got the message yet.

Robert the Hedgehog (voice: Mark Hadlow) arrives from method acting school eager to sample this glamorous backstage world; through rose-tinted vision, he falls in love with chorus girl Lucille the dog (voice: Mark Wright). Bletch’s P.A. Trevor the Rat (voice: Brian Sergent) shoots porno movies in the basement and has other plans for her. [His leading lady Daisy the Cow (voice: Stuart Devenie) is on her last udders.]

By now, you’re probably starting to get the idea. The effect is not dissimilar to watching The Muppets reconceived in terms of excessive sex and violence.

The brains (if that’s the right word) behind this dubious enterprise is New Zealand’s amazingly talented Peter Jackson, whose Bad Taste deservedly achieved cult status.… Read the rest

vs Amp

Colin Webster: baritone saxophone, Fender Twin Reverb and Bassman Amps.

All tracks recorded live. No overdubs, effects or edits.

Raw Tonk Records RT050 / 2021

LP + DL

*****

Remarkable. With no overdubs or other studio trickery, Webster manages to make his sax sound variously like a weird electronic effect, a duck, a didgeridoo, a fog horn, the engine of a prop aircraft, a lawn mower and, in the final moments of the last track, the sound of water disappearing down a plug hole. And that’s just side one!!!

The opening of side two sounds like a double bass (but it’s Colin’s sax). At another point, I could swear I was listening to the mating call of a walrus or the much lighter in tone song of some species of bird.

I realise what I’m writing here is probably open to misinterpretation, so just to clarify, this album is really, really impressive. To my ears, at least.

Buy on Bandcamp.

Note: This review started life as a review on my Bandcamp page after I bought the album. Their allowed word count was too small. I didn’t want to cut it as what I’d written would have lost something.