The Comedy of Errors: Larceny - Scream (23 May 1992)

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It seems as though every other week, I contemplate what I have achieved in my life and find myself wanting.  It’s a horrible phrase, I know, but I really don’t feel like I’ve fulfilled my potential.  And the worst of it is, the fault lies squarely with me.  Lack of drive on one hand, but more fatally, a propensity for distraction which sucks my energy, wastes my time and leaves me ruefully reflecting, “Tomorrow...Tomorrow, I will make it happen...” It’s both the big life-changing stuff and the small, everyday, nitty gritty. Long periods of sloth and ennui, punctuated by spasmodic bursts of activity which briefly gladden the heart and restore purpose, but leave me in need of a lie down because - fuck me, I’ve actually done some stuff.  Well, that’ll do for another five weeks, rinse and repeat....
The distractions are the bugbear and they are what I have to do a better job of setting aside.  Just recently, I’ve found myself poised to launch into long delayed work, but after 5 minutes, I’m setting it aside because if I don’t watch that mash-up video someone did of Yoko Ono launching into some kind of vocal/scream improvisation in a gallery alongside the theme tune to The Good Life then I will  be unable to continue functioning as a human being.  And like all immediate wants, it briefly satisfies, but what lasting achievement have I made either in terms of my short-term responsibilities or any wide long-term significance?

I certainly haven’t been utilising my Yoko Ono fix in the same way that the mind(s?) behind Larceny did when they sampled what sounds like an army of wailing Yokos as a key motif of their 136bpm extravaganza, which uses the duel between the Yokos and processed calls to prayer as an anchor for some extreme synth smashing with knob twiddling and sample spinning designed to sound like a planet screaming in something which sounds pretty close to exultation.  The single was released on Sub Bass Records, a dance offshoot of Earache, and as you might expect from the home of Napalm Death, this is loud, frenetic, maniacal stuff, but it’s that sense of joy and exultation - a feeling of the scream purging the soul of tension, so as to lead to a higher state of bliss, that draws me in.  Larceny have achieved something really rather special here.

If I’m not going to get any work done, neither are you!


Videos courtesy of Earenn Caxapob (Larceny) and AlreadyTaken74 (Ono).