NEW EP

Prufrock is a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Steve Christie and artist Dolly Dolly (David Yates). After playing on Dolly Dolly’s debut album Antimacassar the pair decided to work together on the short series of tracks included on this EP. Dolly recorded sounds from his garden bird table, a grandfather clock, a 91 year old lady who recited a poem from memory, but sadly died two weeks after the recording was made, a group of adults with learning difficulties and a walk though Old Town Hastings towards the sea. Steve used an old school Steinway Grand Piano, a Lowrey DSO-1 Heritage Deluxe organ, a 19th Century Pipe organ, a cello, a violin, a recorder, and a bit of computer, and mastered it on an ex-BBC Pebble Mill Studer B67 tape machine. The project has been over a year in gestation and the pair are currently working together on a full length album.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Campylobacter

Dolly Dolly’s first official book.

20 full colour pages of original collage art and words by Dolly Dolly. 

Introduction by writer and broadcaster Ken Hollings

Printed with heavy card stock covers

Limited to 100 copies.

Each copy comes with an exclusive signed Dolly Dolly art card only available with this first edition.

£6 + Postage.

AVAILABLE FROM HERE
From 21st Nov 2014

Dolly Dolly Reads Richard Brautigan Aloud

The Weather in San Francisco read by Dolly Dolly

A short story taken from Richard Brautigan's collection Revenge of the Lawn.

FREE download HERE

LIVE with the Time Attendant @Krets Art Gallery, Malmo, Sweden. August 2014

Filmed byDeath and Vanilla, 5th August 2014

Hello, I'll be playing a joint set with The Time Attendant at the achingly cool KRETS gallery in Malmö in Sweden on the 5 August 2014.

Also playing are the beautiful and hugely dapper Language Timothy! and dashing Jonas Fust.

More details HERE should you want them.

Oo, here's review I missed first time around from the very smart The Big Takeover magazine.

Kind words.

An “antimacassar” is the doily placed over the back of a chair or on the ends of the armrests to prevent soiling, a practice that began in Victorian England with the popularity of Macassar oil, the contemporary hair grease. For his debut album, poet David Yates, aka Dolly Dolly, uses this out-dated piece of cloth as a metaphor for English life, upon which he comments in a series of twisted spoken-word pieces.

Essentially, Antimacassar plays like a Burroughsian meditation on English culture. Yates speaks his words with multiple personalities: an Anglican priest delivering a sermon, a demonic entity laughing at the priest or the psychotic parishioner trying to make sense of it all. Pieces like “Wattle and Daub,” “Lace” and “My Queen Is Dead” describe the English experience through imaginative wordplay, which continues even when things get dark, as in “Corptoepose,” a description of an autopsy that literally sounds like Jack the Ripper making a phone call. Death in general is very much prevalent, mused upon in “Fix Death” and “Horrible News” while coming alive in “GONE,” a tape cut-up assembled from the voices of two old men. Several tracks also contain background music from the likes of Position Normal, Regal Worm, Time Attendent, Moon Wiring Club, Steve Christie, Ekoplekz and Language, Timothy!, adding to the unsettling nature of the words.

Spoken-word can very easily devolve into self-indulgence and pretension. Fortunately, Dolly Dolly is just off enough to make it work. Listen toAntimacassar before a trip to England just to understand the country a little better. The lessons may not be abundantly clear, but they will make sense in the end.

EXCLUSIVE FREE DOLLY DOLLY NON-ALBUM TRACK

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Review from FREQ by J Simpson

Antimacassar, the debut LP from Dolly Dolly (the alter-ego of David Yates) explores the three -realisms of the 20th Century – surrealism, irrealism and magickal realism – with a combination of spoken word, sci-fi electronics, sound collage and avant-classicism. The result is punker than punk, heavier than heavy metal and manages to creep-out, illuminate and inspire; and thus subvert normalcy. Antimacassar also features some of the current electronic scene’s blackest lights, with contributions from Ekoplekz, Moon Wiring Club, Position Normal, Time Attendant and more.

a symbol by which to dissect Englishness

An antimacassar is a lace doily, placed over the back of armchair in Victorian drawing rooms. Dolly Dolly uses this image of antiquated British life as a symbol by which to dissect Englishness. It starts off with “Wattle & Daub (with Position Normal)”, a not-entirely flattering homage:

England my England / You flickering island of endlessness upon endlessness / A cold mist of your fibrous trolleys stifles the sun/ and the arrow aimed at your heart fidgets with smoky spasms…

half-strangled uncles stuffed with crisps…

your weather like underdone mutton…

…and her dress is made of unwound clockwork.

This gives you a hint of the unsettling language you have in store on this 19-track soliloquy.

the sinister surrealism of the everyday and flourishes into monstrous

Antimacassar is rooted in the sinister surrealism of the everyday and flourishes into monstrous, fleshy perfumed gardens, rife with decay and potential. Look at the short “Among,” in which coins come to life, “they wriggle, bright and alive, in my palm.”

There is a mission, here; and a message to be unburied, like those coins.

There is a disturbing tendency among “extreme musics” to label and commidify, thus negating their threat. It is a simple, but dangerous, mind twist, with over-privileged suburbanites getting to feel tough and street by co-opting revolutionary and antagonistic music like hip-hop, punk rock, noise and black metal. It could be said that to name and codify these musicks is to rip out their fangs with rusty pliers, making them safe, drooling house pets for the status quo.

Dolly Dolly does not come out and tell you what he is up to. With the somewhat light-hearted cover art, David Yates catches you off guard, and shatters yr world view like a blunt force trauma, like a 4X4 to the temple.

Antimacassar also reminds us of the ritualistic power of listening to an album – a whole album, from start to finish. You fall under its spell; it takes you on a journey. The album tells you something, transferring some hidden wisdom. In that way, the spinning stylus calls the circle; and the ritual is underway for as long as it spins. In a very unexpected way, Dolly Dolly reminds us of the real purpose of ritual and magick, to shatter consensual reality, to re-imprint society’s hold upon our minds. Traditional ritual used a grab bag of methods to produce extreme states, from love to terror. It was designed to place you in unfamiliar territory, to make you think for yrself, to become yr own master.

accumulates to produce a terrible gnosis, a feeling of potency and possibility

There is a gradual decay of waking life and mundane thoughts as you listen to Dolly Dolly’s dream dialogues repetitively. The streets seem to open up and swallow you whole, as the possibility of something rising from the ocean, with carousel horses swimming for their lives. All of this surrealism and morbidity accumulates to produce a terrible gnosis, a feeling of potency and possibility, which then erupts in “Everbecoming,” which is a serious, no-joke dissertation on post-Thelemic occult thought. There’s not even any music – it might as well be a fourth way lecture.

Adept – a man who by conscious effort of will is able to free his being from the influences who condition the human being, and thus attains possession of superhuman power and knowledge.

In a wonderful piece written by Mark Fisher, the esteemed K-Punk, for ElectronicBeats.net, he wrote, “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.”

a harrowing journey that doesn’t pull any punches

A direct line from banality to full-blown imagination, from modern life, through irrealism, to mystical enlightenment. It’s a harrowing journey that doesn’t pull any punches. During Antimacassar‘s brief existence, you will be subjected to your own autopsy, (“Corptoepose”), reflections on death (“Gone”) and your father’s ghost spilling out into the street as newstype stains your hands (“Horrible News”). Amidst the phantasms and the memento mori there is wonder to be found. Boring, horrible, soul-grinding reality is shattered for good – leaving room for something more.

Antimacassar is beat poetry for beatheads. In one fell swoop, he reclaims the threat of poetry and sound collage, making something truly challenging and thrilling. Dig beneath the surface – you’ll never be the same.

Freq also reviewed The Time Attendant's Treacherous Orb EP and Ekoplekz's Unfidelity. Both of whom feature on Antimacassar.

Customer review on Amazon UK:

The Strangeness of Familiarity
Customer rating 5.0/5.0
29 Jan 2014 By Tee Double You Bee Esq


Imagine Betjeman schooled in Burroughs, Ballard and Crowley - you're on your way to 'Anitmacassar' and what a wonderful trip it is too. Throughout this spoken-word journey (accompanied by field recordings/found sounds/electronic whizzery) lies an all-pervasive otherness; the comfortable fear of your grandparents' house as a child (all ticking clocks and musty smells), the sad tale of an extinct beehive and a mother with three thumbs.

Distinct English ephemera, from seaside atmospherics to Sooty & Sweep, colours these evocative missives from an inventive poet. 'Green Man's cut-and-paste, manipulated names of trees rubs shoulders with a cold, robotic account of autopsy. 'Gone' repeats the chuckled existential resignation of a kindly old timer next to the 'Shining' ambience of the genuinely creepy 'Horrible News'. I particular enjoy 'Lace' which is reminiscent (in sound at least) of Kerouac accompanied by Steve Allen. The titular track (Doily Doily, anyone?) is another superb meander through very English tropes and is thoroughly entrancing.

Where this triumphs over many other, please excuse me, 'hauntological' releases is in that it manages to side-step the slightly camp silliness. 'Antimacassar' is genuinely unsettling with a strong whiff of the occult snaking around suburbia. What's more is that it bears repeated listens with the supple word-play and excellent musical accompaniment from such luminaries as Position Normal, Moon Wiring Club and The Time Attendant.

Highly recommended for a leap into the uncanny. 

Review of Antimacassar in Wire magazine dated Jan 14:

"Dolly Dolly’s Antimacassar is a mostly spoken word album leaning towards the surreal rather than the mystic. He shifts from reeling off Victorian naturalist’s specimen catalogues to Dalek-toned accounts of sinister medical procedures, with references to lace curtains and pub snacks tossed in to balance the familiar with the strange. The references are always distinctly English. Musically, songs slide from jazzy stronk with xylophone to synthesiser slithers worthy of Coil. “Noctambulist” builds over a musique concrete last used to soundtrack a gaudy parade of market stall goods and egg breaking machines in the 1967 film The London Nobody Knows.

If anything this album calls to mind a contemporary take on Lady June’s Linguistic Leprosy, the 1975 album of poetry by multimedia artist June Campbell Cramer, who was the connecting point between Ivor Cutler, Brain Eno and members of Gong and Soft Machine. Dolly Dolly’s words draw together collaborators from a roster of the Exotic Pylon label and the Outer Church club nights: Time Attendant, Position Normal and Moon Wiring Club, among others. Dolly Dolly deals with hive mind half dreams that collapse in the absence of community. English eccentricity, it would seem, abhors a vacuum."

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.

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

How exciting!