Friends In Noise. Black Market Karma

Black Market Karma could be found on this blog in the fall of 2022 with a couple of recent singles. Here's the band again with its 11th album, Friends In Noise'. The London band around Stanley Belton is on a roll as it announced a support tour for no other than The Black Angels in February.

Friends In Noise is a six song mini album containing collaborations and new mixes of songs. They all have a hang for 60s psychedelics and a pleasurable form of musical vagueness. It appears that Belton got the best out of his collaborations. 

'Aping Flair' with Ruari Meehan continues where 'Rain' by The Beatles stopped. The playfulness of John's idea of a rainy day is exchanged for the continuing guitar splattering of the tandem Reed/Morrison and Johnny Marr. It results in a song that is light and dark all at once, without either side winning and without becoming a drab grey day. 'Aping Flair' holds the best of both. Listen to the two guitars. One dark, one light with in between layers of other guitars, the other instruments and the singing. The result is a song to keep discovering new contributions in.

Listening further into the record there's only one downside: don't expect to hear something new. 'Wonky', e.g., is a slowed down variation of 'Stand'. The good news is that it doesn't matter. The song has its own inner strength. The drums pound away in the best Mo Tucker way, combined with a R.E.M. kind of swing. This collaboration with The Underground Youth works also. "Pa pa pa", sung with a downbeat voice seldom sounded so effective. Again the different sounds between the guitars create the right balance between the light and the shade.

Photo Louisa Pili

The song with Tess Parks has already been discussed extensively last year. The Velvet Underground, again, is never far away on Friends In Noise. With a nice long intro, slowly building up the song. Parks is able to sound like a singer from the grave. Here she has this wild rasp to her voice that gives the song a very double feel. "I don't feel a thing", she sings and sounds like it, almost, that is. The combination with the lead guitar that keeps exploring a new melody against the over and over repeated chords, gives her voice that extra. 'The Sky Was All Diseased' is simply one of the best post-The Velvet Underground songs made to date.

The first of two remixes, 'Heady Ideas', is more one dimensional, just a trippy song and because of that, the least interesting song on Friends In Noise. The second, 'War In The Streets', is this trippy ballad. The voice is treated with electronics giving the song a mysterious layer. Guitar upon guitar comes by. Again a lot to discover and offering the opportunity to follow each part individually. This is fun.

The album ends with another collaboration. 'Ageing Boy', with The Confederate Death, is another psychedelic ballad. It takes a while longer to come alive but it certainly does. Again by way of the arrangement of the song. Stanley Belton and friends have an endless imagination where individual parts are concerned. They make Friends In Noise a joy to listen to.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Friends In Noise here:

https://flowerpowerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/black-market-karma-and-friends-friends-in-noise