Cut It review in The Line of Best Fit, nov. 2010, continued
The whole album is awash with freakish ideas. It revels in the beauty of repetition, which hypnotic and at times nausea inducing. Milton’s disjointed vocals badger and threaten as these frantic songs do their work.
The only real respite comes in the shape of the strangely funky Block, which sounds out of place on an album populated with nightmarish sounds and images. That said, although the guitar and bass riff on Rufus Thomas’ Funky Chicken initially, come the mid-point it sounds like Blurt have taken the chicken to watch the pigs get slaughtered.
The absurd Minibar wraps things up with Milton jamming images together against a back dropping of headfuck honking horns and humming electronica. It’s better than it sounds.
Cut It! is a challenging album of that there is no doubt. Although it dabbles in free jazz, the majority of the album is crammed with dark, dirty pop songs. Those familiar with David Thomas of Pere Ubu, Beefheart and The Residents won’t be particularly troubled by the content of Cut It! but for the uninitiated, this is a wonderful introduction to the off-kilter world of one of Britain’s most gloriously unhinged bands.
