Maverick musician and member of both Nurse With Wound and Current 93, Andrew Liles, is celebrating his immanent 50th birthday by releasing Colossus – a collection of 50 tracks, all of which are 50 minutes long.
The first part made up of 25 tracks, Colossus (Part One), which you can listen to above, contains over 20 hours worth of music. The second, Colossus (Part Two), will be released on his actual 50th birthday, 11 March 2019.
This digital album – one can only presume that in the current climate it may be some time before we see a vinyl edition – is essentially a collection of every single number one song that was at the top of the charts on his birthday for the last half a century.
Andrew explains how he engineered the cover versions, which in all cases sound nothing like the original: "The music is either in the same key or with the same notes played but in a different order, backwards or inverted. Further music and notation has been added by myself. They are absolutely nothing like the originals.
"I have adapted the lyrics by using the William Burroughs cut up method and further changed them to make some kind of structure, but they remain predominantly abstract and nonsensical."
While I can’t pretend I’ve listened to the whole thing, the opening track, ‘Where Did You Go To (My Lovely)?’ featuring vocals by Jean-Herve Peron of Fasust really is something, an ambient synth epic with overtones of Tangerine Dream, Tubeway Army and Eno; while surely everyone needs to hear Maniac, the former frontman of OG Norwegian black metallers Mayhem, reciting cut up lyrics over deconstructed cosmic cover versions of ‘Wand’rin’ Star’, ‘Too Many Broken Hearts’, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ and ‘Jealous Guy’.
