It’s been a mere 18 months since his debut effort, ‘THE SFPEO’, (The Shambolic Fuzz-Pop Extra Ordinary’) gurgled to the surface. A comparative scintilla of a minute between albums for most recording artists. But Self-Styled “cracked-shadow” Vincent Nifigance has wrought ‘second album trouble’ upon himself, even going so far as to have it title-parasitize the ‘definitive’ appellation of its predecessor.

Originally titled: ‘The So-Fucking Sophoclean Sophomoronic Pretension’ and with a signifigantly different tracklisting, his original vision for the album fell to smithereen-pieces, before his disbelieving ears.

On the eve of the release of the newly rejigged ‘SFSSP’ (warily re-titled ‘The Self Fulfilling Secondary Stumbling Prophecy”), Spaff Matheson met up with the self-proclaimed ‘Jackdaw Tour Guide’, very close (we are told) to the undisclosed location of his transitory ‘Fort Rack Studios’.

Article By Spaff Matheson Pics By Denise Feasability

It’s late December weather, in early November.

Cigarette-puffing through a woollen cuff, the artist barely-known as Vincent Nifigance stands up and offers a duty-bound hand for shaking. His ankles cracking like tiny colt-guns cocking as he accordions. He cuts a diminutive figure. At odds with the auspicious surroundings. He looks for all the world like a Trump Towers tramp.

He’s the physical embodiment of his canon. At once raggedy, and nuanced. Playful and affronting. Sloshing coffee. He gives the impression he could split stone will with a well-placed stare, and attempts it on my skull when I suggest he copped-out on his original intention of delivering a concept album.

“It was too restrictive.” He barks. “A garrotting kindergarten cock-ring of a thing, and after returning…(after being)…right on the line for months, I was not in the frame of mind to operate on one side, on one extreme.”

Referring to his charity trip to equatorial Guinea, its as if his mood lifts considerably, despite briefly reliving an obviously tumultuous period. One that threatened to undo him completely. In February of 2008, he took part in a sponsored trans-equatorial knife-fight, in aid of the kidnapped Christian dance-troupe – ‘Pope-Motion’. The documentary of which was meant to be included in a deluxe 3 disc set of ‘The SFSSP’, but like the concept theme, has not proved forthcoming.

“Hot Steel” was directed by Nifigance and long-time confidant Dustin Wooferson, of ‘Dustin’s Fuss Puddle’, the Spoodge-Wave decet from Missile-En-Le-Fylde, North West England. The two met when Vincent was leaving a music lesson with teacher Jecko Buhbimbeh, (whom he named his label Jecko Reckids in honour of) and instantly hit it off over a mutual respect of German Guitar supremoso Dieter Von Moth-Hockey, whom Nifigance would go on to work with on his debut.

“’Hot Steel’ will never see the light of a projector. Not that I didn’t give a good account of myself. It just kicks up rough dust. Memories that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. You really don’t know the true meaning of brotherhood until a man you’ve known as your ‘mojito de la comanchero cajoñe’s’ dances a blade across your ribs, and the flesh, once one, briefly rubs together (when you incidentally corkscrew your torso), confused, weeping blood for reunion.”

He pinions and teeters, hissing an inaudible curse, like a cliff-gypsy when I offer that these experiences precipitated a seismic shift, rendering cockeyed his original vision of ‘the SFSSP’.

“It was dead in the water when I left the harbour. I went because it had died.”

Mind-wind back to September 2007, and Nifigance began recording the atmospheric album-opener ‘Paper Rabbit’, a song written in January of that year. In an interview with ‘ZapGasm’ magazine, he discussed the direction the new album was going to take. Offering some tantalising glimpses through the insight-pipes.

“I dreamed, over a couple of nights, about a young couple. At first I never saw them. There was just a hotel bed. And forensics were shining an ultra-violet light on the mattress, and you could see, what I knew to be cum spots, and these cum spots formed the outline of a male and female body overlapping. A join the dots with the cum spots sort of affair. And I knew the couple were disappeared but not dead. Sort of surreptitiously evicted from existence. And there was a shadow on the floor. Not associated with a body. And the shadow was that of the person responsible. Another night, I saw how they came to disappear. And it was the most epic moment of my dreaming life. And I made the paper rabbit.”

“Its like a dough-fist full of water, knocking from the inside of the blood-oven door” folds-open Paper Rabbit. Whereupon he offers no further elaboration as to what the Paper Rabbit is. As though that ludicrous opening line alone would suffice.

“Its like a dough-fist full of water, knocking from the inside of the blood oven door”
…comes the reply when I ask him what the eponymous origami leporid really is.

The song rises through a nocturnal drawl of cricket calls and puddle winged cars, and tells of how “he made a rabbit, a paper rabbit, tried to take/chase a rabbit home.” Before a coda which sounds more like a segue which is never reciprocated, submits and second track ‘Autologous’ lurches in, and it all falls apart. Like a drunk Rodney Dangerfield at your baby girl’s funeral.