A video film for My Queen is Dead (2013)

Here's my bit of a joint review with eMMplekz on Electronic Beats from Mark Fisher:

'A surface joviality—a different kind of humor, much less mordant—separates Dolly Dolly from eMMplekz. Yet it’s the slippages of tone and genre, from light pastiche to intimations of mortality, the sliding of persona from gone-to-seed raconteur to charity shop mystic, from short story-teller to preening bard, that make Antimacasser such an odd jewel of a record, and Dolly so singular a performer.

The opening track, “Wattle and Daub”—a collaboration with Position Normal—is more than worth the admission price alone. Over a lysergically-smeary detuned piano (or maybe guitar), Dolly Dolly dolefully declaims a Nonsense-Shakespearean state of the nation address. “England my England… the cold mist of your fibrous trolleys stifles the sun… half-strangled uncles stuffed with crisps… your sky full of plump chintz cushions…” It’s like Tony Hancock’s melancholia has been dream-conflated with his mockery of thespian and playwright pretensions. Yet the Nonsense is disarming: “Wattle and Daub” gives us nothing less than a psychedelic-surrealist portrait of a country deprived of psychedelia and surrealism. A world without surprise, an entirely domesticated universe, banality as cosmology: “Let’s colonize the other planets, fill them with bitter and dry roasted peanuts, pigeons and oven chips.” The dead world of middle-aged Britain’s living rooms; the cheery veneer of advertising’s ever-smiling, glowing-faced families turned inside out. “I’m sick of being a man,” moans the character who narrates the closing track. Aren’t we all? But Antimacasser finds all sort of disused or temporarily abandoned doorways into other worlds, all kinds of rabbit holes in which we can escape from being a sad human animal. Old New English Library paperbacks become occult manuals, full of esoteric philosophy. It’s still possible to transform ourselves, to transport ourselves, and Dolly Dolly shows us how.'

Read the whole review HERE.

Hello. Dolly here.

Two reviews of my debut album Antimacassar have appeared on the internet.




You can read the one on the INCLUDE ME OUT blog - HERE

or here:

'An antimacassar is a small cloth placed over the backs or arms of chairs, or the head or cushions of a sofa, to prevent soiling of the permanent fabric.

Crystal clear pronunciation ensures that Dolly Dolly's prose comes across crystal clear & that's a good thing because it's worth hearing.  

Diverse backing tracks add to the appeal, from Free Jazz to solo piano and Replekz radiophonics the music enhances the poetry superbly.

'And the sea develops a scab of interlocking child's fingers...'

Surrealism lurks behind the twitching curtains of suburbia. 

'Antimacassar and the death of Hauntology...'

T.S.Eliot meets Hans Arp?

Dark, profound, playful and damned good...'

and the other from SANTA SANGRE magazine - HERE

or here:

'There’s little information about the reasoning behind this album, it showed up in my inbox unannounced last week and curious fellow that I am, I investigated. Well there’s something to this, more than mere experimentalism or list-detail lyrics. This is a guy who reads from Naked Lunch and puts it up on his site to download gratis. Consider the world-view of a person who would do this; surrealism is the name of the game in what he jots down and then mashes into musical arrangements you aren’t even ready for. What is it with that tiny island that brings out this kind of work? The rain, perhaps? The drudgery of doing the daily? Ringtones from mobile phones which place in the charts… you see, now he’s got me doing this.

“Antimacassar” is chocked full of atmospheres and observations on the human condition which will haunt you long after this irritatingly short record has concluded. Most of what’s on here tops out at no more than two and a half minutes in length, although there are a few exceptions. I’d be very interested to know where he got some of the voices on this from, in particular the old men who on one hand obsess over death and on the other wistfully remark ‘it come when it’s ready’.

When you’re gone, you’re gone yes? Dolly Dolly deliver soliloquies on sickening themselves drinking the rain, naturalist observations which curl in upon themselves, terrible news (well isn’t it all) and an autopsy procedural guide. I’d almost go so far as to say the music on this album is incidental, that it grew up around his words like bitterly tenacious ivy. A vaguely familiar girl’s sing song is combined with nicely nautical backing accompaniment, it is then swept out of the way to allow our poet’s observations full range to expound on just how sinister these pastoral settings actually are. He sees things in his writings I certainly wouldn’t.

How he plays around with how his own voice is recorded really is a pleasure to immerse myself in, Dolly Dolly never come straight at you. He’s your best friend and analytical clinician at the same time. The effects he trots out are dynamic to say the least, I wonder how much Vincent Price he’s channeling for some of the more dramatic moments I’ve fallen into while listening to an album who’s names meaning is as in-congruent with the subject matter as the subject matter itself is to anything or anyone outside of his head. These are the thoughts. This is the album. You have your marching orders now. I’ll leave the defining of what style this is to the professional press because I don’t have a clue as to what it is.

Reason enough to partake of this arcane delicacy. Enjoy the vim.'

That is all, you can stand down now.

Unused words that didn't make it onto Antimacassar.

DOWNLOAD

Gosh! The debut album by Dolly Dolly is now available to pre-order HERE!

How exciting!