On the evening of Friday 17 September 2004, Piskies Revenge ventured relatively far from their Dartmoor retreat and played the Kingsbridge Inn, a popular music venue in Totnes, famously frequented by smugglers since its inception in the Middle Ages. Appropriately enough, the Piskies, in front of a sizable crowd of the grooviest cats in town, smuggled a bizarre approach to timing into the unsuspecting town.
In the Piskies music system, "Duodelic", there can be various numbers of beats in each bar of music - 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or a mixture of several - but all bars are the same length. (Usually, when people play in odd time signatures, the beats are the same length and the bars get longer and shorter.) In practical terms, this means a very odd-sounding composite beat from the bass and drums, providing a ridiculously rich rhythmic field for other musicians such as myself.
I worked with Piskies Revenge for about four years, 2004-2008, and added a particularly mad guitar-thrashing approach to the band, making things even more complicated wherever possible and attempting to incorporate calculations unknown to arithmetic into bluesy solos. I also provided them with melodies and lyrics here and there (hey Piskies, can we please have a take of "Retox" some time soon?) and wrote the classic "Exploding Goat" whilst thoroughly under their influence.
For more Piskies Revenge music, including the culmination of the four years, the "Slab" studio album, check out www.piskiesrevenge.com.
Lineup: Space (drums), Deep (bass), Dave Rickard (organ), Steve Rogers (guitar and vocal), Terence (guitar on 04).
Recorded by Feet Productions Mobile and produced by Steve Rogers for Feet Productions.
Free to download, but composition and recording copyrights are retained.
01 Marbles.mp3 - by Johnny Jaundrill and Steve Rogers, but written in 4/4 which the Piskies do their best to avoid.
02 Not The Same Old Thing.m4a - by Steve Rogers, but also contains novel & extranous material.
03 Take Seven Marbles.m4a - by Space & Deep with melody by Steve, contains extraneous Marbles.
04 Guest Star.m4a - improvisation veering dangerously close to rock'n'roll, featuring hairy Totnes guitar hero, Terence.
05 Flake Earlidaze.m4a - by Space and Deep, with melody (if you can call it that) and unsolicited Cadbury's ad by Steve.
06 Downbeat Dance.m4a - an instant composition by the band, and the jazziest and most melodic piece here.
07 Punk Same Old Thing.m4a - another go at Same Old Thing, without Dave who had got tired and packed up. Aggressive.
08 Punk Earlidaze.m4a - a 3-piece take on Earlidaze. Very aggressive. Tired now.