Music

Trash Kit: Music that makes sense

Mike Williams | Saturday 3 July, 2010 14:04

I once suffered the terrible misfortune of spending an evening in a grubby studio in East London where the most boring man in the world explained to me in great detail the finer nuances of the sensory condition synesthesia.

For those of you fortunate enough to have arrived at this point in life without such elucidation, synesthesia is a is a neurologically-based syndrome in which stimulation of one sense leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second, meaning you smell some dog shit, you hear a bell ring, or something like that.

For this harbinger of yawns, seeing music as colours was his curse. For example, stick some Kylie on the stereo and he’d stare vacantly into the distance and grumble “bluuuueeeee” like a man doing an incredibly bad impression of Grampa Simpson. Slam a bit of Maiden on and he’d yelp “PINK!” like he was getting into a hot bath, and so on.

Sounds like bollocks, yeah? Naturally I wrote him off as a tit and filed his disorder next to Wheat Allergies as illnesses only caught by terminally middle-class tossers, and went home and read the Guardian and shit.

Where this is going is here; listen to Trash Kit, the album by the band of the same name that sounds like it was recorded in a grubby studio in East London, and you’ll see the cut and paste mechanics of lovingly crafted fanzines and handmade record sleeves floating before your eyes. Stick your ear as close to the speaker as you can and you’ll see a shitty broken biro scribbling the lyrics onto the wall in front of you.
This is because what Trash Kit trio Rachael Aggs, Rachel Horwood and Ros Murray do is bring to life the cobbled-together ethos of do it yourself culture, and craft it into short stabs of loopy, chanty folk-punk brilliance.

“[Former Plan B editor] Frances Morgan said our music was ‘alchemical like friendship’ and I really like that description,” reckons Aggs. “I don’t like to call it anything really. We’re just having fun and making a racket.”

That racket has manifested itself as 17 tracks on their debut record, released in May by the super-cool Upset The Rhythm label, home to Gentle Friendly and No Age amongst others. If the label is their home, then their crinkly old relatives come in the form of girl-punk pioneers The Raincoats and The Slits, right? It’s an obvious comparison, and one Aggs tires of continually being made.

“We were in The Independent recently in this ridiculous article that grouped us with all these female musicians we had nothing in common with, like it was some kind of novelty girl movement—but we do love The Slits and The Raincoats so it’s definitely valid to compare us to them.”

So what of the DIY ethic that feels so prevalent in their music? As Aggs explains, it’s a world she’s all too familiar with: “We make a zine that we give out at shows. I’m getting to know more people that write Zines and I think it’s an awesome community and a great way of getting ideas out. I’m not really a writer but then that’s what’s good about zines, you don’t really have to be, you can just splurge out all your thoughts and feelings and no one’s gonna edit them down.”

It’s how they make their zines and its how they make their music. Splurge then stop, and if it sounds good, keep it. Put the record on and see for yourself. It’s a wonderful audio-visual mess from a stuck-together world. It’s not synesthesia, but it definitely makes sense.

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