Household Objects (And Sundry Massed Gadgets), Various Artists (The 62nd Gramophone Company)
Household Objects has long held a special place in Pink Floyd lore. This on-off project occupied considerable studio time in 1974, as the band, possibly a bit dazed by just how huge The Dark Side of the Moon had made them, attempted compositions using nothing but – the clue’s in the title – household objects. Brooms sweeping, elastic bands twanging, the tearing of paper, an old broom sweeping the floor – all were recorded, looped and otherwise manipulated to form the basis of tracks which, for the most part, have never seen the light of day. A fragment of tuned wine glasses would open Wish You Were Here, and brief extracts would appear as bonus tracks on box sets of Dark Side and Wish You Were Here decades later.
Last year, to mark the half-centenary of this abandoned folly, William Hayter and Barry Lamb contacted a selection of experimental musicians with the frankly preposterous notion of creating an album based on the same principles. Naturally, everyone jumped at the chance, and the result is this beautifully packaged – think Max Ernst working for Hipgnosis – double CD of strange and wonderful sonic explorations from artists as diverse as Yumi Hara, Rapoon, Two Headed Emperor, Akaten, Geoffrey Richardson, Guy Harries, and more. From the scratchy to the symphonic, the melodic to the maniacal, every piece is worthy of review in its own right, and will send you scurrying off down digital wormholes to check out artists’ further works.
What’s vital here, though, is that this stands as a coherent album, which is testament to Hayter and Lamb’s vision and artistry (which can also be seen in their own excellent musical contributions). Indeed, serendipitously enough, just as I was pondering this cohesion from chaos, who should I bump into, wandering through a field with an ice cream, but William Hayter himself, so I asked him how such a project takes shape:
Sequencing a project like this is always going to be a challenge. We are not
dealing with songs here, so an understanding of each piece and how it sets the
mood and pace of the album is important. The gaps between pieces are
equally important for setting the pace, as well as the ebb and flow of it all, as
any mastering engineer will tell you. It was really exciting to finally piece it
all together and hear the album as a whole, rather than the individual tracks
when submitted.
Leaving William in piece to finish his ice cream, I pressed Play again, for the however-manyth time. It’s a set that I’ve now listened to immersively in a darkened room, and which I’ve played in the background as part of the domestic ambience (What’s the cat up to in the kitchen? Ah, no, it’s Geoff Leigh’s niftily-titled ‘Pie Wrecks’), and it works in both contexts. And there’s so much detail and nuance, that I know it will keep on delivering surprises.
At a time in which it’s virtually impossible to look at any local venue’s gig list without there being a Pink Floyd tribute somewhere on the horizon, this is the real deal: a tribute to the ground-breaking, slightly bonkers, playful – as much Monty Python as high art – avant-gardism that Pink Floyd introduced into British psychedelia and progressive rock at their creative peak. I once read an interview with Nick Mason, in which he referred to Household Objects as a “delaying tactic” employed while the band were avoiding the daunting task of following up The Dark Side of the Moon. In his sleeve note for this realisation of this crazy project, he notes that: “if [Pink Floyd] have encouraged, or in some ways inspired these recordings, then maybe it wasn’t such a wasted effort!” It most definitely wasn’t, Nick, and I salute you, David, Roger, Rick, and all your massed gadgets.
Find out all about it at: https://bit.ly/HouseholdObjects
.
Oz Hardwick
.